Home from a great week in the Sunflower State.First, there was a whirlwind of music-making and teaching at The Temple, Congregation B'nai Jehudah, my Jewish home-away-from-home in the midwest.Reuniting with friends and being embraced by the B'nai Jehudah family was a balm for my soul. And hanging out with the kids from Machane Jehudah was simply joyous! From there, I traveled to Lawrence for a gathering at KU Hillel and a songwriters' roundtable at the Americana Music Academy.Photos below show what a great trip this was, and how warmly embraced I felt by everyone I met along the way. Special thanks to Rabbi Art Nemitoff at B'nai Jehudah; Rabbi Neal Schuster at KU Hillel and Rachel Black at Americana for their warm hospitality and enthusiasm about spirituality, music and community.I returned home late last night feeling very tired and very, very blessed.

I'm home for a little while now, with shows at Rose Schnitzer Manor and World Cup Coffee, plus Kabbalat Shabbat services at Havurah Shalom.

I am still booking dates for February 2016 through May 2017! If your community wants to bring in an innovative, fun, friendly and encouraging artist- or teacher-in-residence at a very affordable rate, use the contact form (http://www.beth-hamon-music.com/contact.html) to get ahold of me and let's plan your weekend of learning and music-making NOW!

(The text of a drash I will give tomorrow evening at Congregation B'nai Jehudah)

I flew nearly two thousand miles to be here with you this Shabbat.

That statement is miraculous, both for the distance covered and for the means of travel.Before I changed careers three years ago, I could count on ONE hand the number of times I’d flown in an airplane in my entire life.Since dedicating myself to the work of Jewish education and music, I have now lost count of the number of times I’ve flown.And yet, I make an effort with each flight to do two things: to recite the Traveler’s prayer before every take-off; and to remind myself of just how amazing it is to fly though the air.

I say the prayer because, well, anytime I set out on a journey I cannot completely predict the outcome. Saying the prayer doesn’t necessarily protect me from that uncertainty, but it does help me to put it into perspective so I can travel without completely losing my nerve, without being ruled by any fears I may have. When you name things — including your fears — they lose some of their power.

And even now, three years and many airplane trips later, I still make it a point to stop whatever I’m doing and look out the window as the airplane lifts into the skies. Because I never want to take that awesomeness for granted. Because even now, more than a century after the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, it IS STILL amazing and a little unbelievable, that human beings can fly thousands of feet above the earth, traveling through the air at speeds that were inconceivable to our great-grandparents.

At the dawn of the automotive age, which began a few decades before the age of flight, automobiles were little more than noisy playthings of the wealthy. The gas-powered internal combustion engines of the 1880’s belched black smoke and backfired loudly every few hundred feet as they sped along at an unheard-of ten miles an hour, frightening horses and competing for limited road space with bicyclists and pedestrians. The first cars must have been simultaneously fascinating and a little terrifying to the general population.

We can go back earlier and earlier, to the beginnings of each progression in human transport — bicycles, horse-drawn carriages, all the way back to when the wheel was first invented, and a farmer could use a crude cart to haul his crops to market, or to haul his possessions away from a war-torn territory and, hopefully, towards safety.At the beginning of each of these phases of development, a world of possibilities lay unknown before us. In many cases, we built the machine before we knew what it might be truly capable of, or how it might ultimately transform our lives.

Martin Buber once said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

When I first came here in June 2013, hired as the music specialist for Machane Jehudah, I had no idea how things would go. The camp itself was entering its second year, and some of the things students in the program now take for granted were just being developed then. And I only knew ONE person here when I arrived. As with all journeys, things unfolded over time. I made new friends, fell in love with the students, and at the end of my monthlong residency Rabbi Nemitoff asked me if I might come back again before the summer ended. So I did, to our mutual delight, and that was the beginning, as Bugs Bunny would say, of a “bee-yoo-tee-full’ friendship.

Our portion says that God appeared to Abram, and told him his life would change course. Abram would go where God would direct him, and as a result of following God’s directions, Abram would become the father of a great nation, his descendants more numerous than the stars. Imagine how Abram might have felt, being asked to step into the unknown — to leave what was familiar and go somewhere totally new. Granted, he did take along quite an entourage of relatives and livestock — but he was still going somewhere where he’d be a stranger, an unknown quantity to those he encountered.

Many of us are familiar with the interpretation of the words “lech l’cha” as meaning, “Go to your self”. Go to something new that will encourage — or compel — you to enlarge your vision, to expand your skills and knowledge, to step out of your comfort zone.In our highly mobile age, we are constantly struggling between opposing forces that challenge us to dare bigger, or invite us to stay where we are. There are positive and negative aspects to both directions. Every choice has its upside, and its price.

How does taking a leap of faith affect our relationships with those closest to us? How does it affect where and how we live? Where and how our children are educated, and what opportunities we provide — or deny — them, as a result of taking that leap? The answers are different for each of us. And it may not always be the right time to move in a new direction. But life will present each of us with an opportunity when it IS right to go forward — to something unknown and without guarantees — more than once. How will we respond? How do we move through the stuck-ness of our fears? How do we name our fears so that they will hold less power over us, so we can move forward to the place we ought to be?

Given the choice of remaining where I was three years ago, stuck in an industry and a life I felt I was outgrowing, or taking a huge risk and stepping off into the great unknown of a new career (though not a new calling), I knew that the risk of falling flat on my face was real, and very close at hand. Still, I decided that if I was going to take the chance, it had to be right there and then — or I’d never work up the courage to do it later on. I took a chance. In the three years since, I have known many ups and downs professionally and personally, and I have been blessed with the opportunity to travel across the country and meet amazing, generous, wonderful people who have shown me what might be possible — and who have confirmed that, regardless of the struggles, I’ve made the right choice. People like all of you. I am grateful that my decision has brought me to a place and to friends who constitute a home away from home for me, a place I look forward to visiting, God willing, again and again.

Imagine you're out with a group of good friends. You get a table at a restaurant and people start talking animatedly in the way good friends often do. And the conversation turns to the subject of a woman who everyone else at the table knows except you. You have never met this woman. You hear she's beautiful. You've heard from other folks, acquaintances and friends alike, that she's somewhat difficult. Thorny, opinionated, given to violent outbursts. You've heard her described as having a split personality at times. But she's fascinating, smart, funny and very creative. And your friends who know tell you that you have to meet her, too. In fact, they suggest, going through life without having experienced this one-of-a-kind woman is sort of like going through life without your right arm. She's that amazing.

Some of my friends who've never met her are already in love with her. They grew up knowing all about her, and they can't wait to meet her.

Here's the catch: To meet her, you have to go to her. She's not coming to you. And to go where she is, well, it's very expensive, what the Germans call "scheisse teuer". Plus, it can be dangerous; there's that volatile split personality thing and it's impossible to know when she won't fly off the handle. If you catch her on a really bad day you could get your head knocked off your neck, seriously.

Still, my friends tell me, she's worth it. She's all that. Really.

What's funny is that even my friends who haven't met her yet already love her.

And this is where I get hung up. Because I didn't know much about her growing up (except the split personality part, because she seems to have had that going on since the earth cooled). I didn't really start to hear a whole lot about her until I came into this community as an adult. And then, the messages were more than mixed. They were slanted, or purposefully blind to some of the facts. A fascinating, smart, funny and beautiful woman with split personality (or bipolar disorder, or something) and a hair-trigger temper that I'm supposed to fall in love with before I've met her? And the cost of meeting her is so high as to be completely out of reach.

Flashback: during my bicycle industry days, I traveled to Interbike, the large industry-only bicycle trade show that takes place every year in Las Vegas. Between meetings with suppliers and manufacturers, placing orders and involuntarily huffing the off-gases from the rubber and plastic in the exhibit hall booths, there were outings each evening that one could partake of -- if one was invited. I was never invited, even though by then I knew a LOT of higher-up folks in the industry and knew that I was greatly respected by them. I showed up at one event where I paid my regular admission, then stood outside the VIP area where live music, beer and snacks flowed freely. All the "cool" kids were in the VIP area, and none had invited me to join them. There was also an after-party, to which my co-worker was invited but I was not. So I spent two hours at this event talking to almost no one. Finally, when it was clear that things would not change, I caught the shuttle bus back to my hotel and went to bed. Later, my co-worker staggered in tipsy at around 3 am. She informed me that the after-party was mostly a beer fest with pretty serving girls and lots of men. In fact, she and one other woman had been the only two women there not wearing bikinis and pouring beer. Rumor had it that a few of the serving girls disappeared into other rooms with individual trade show attendees (all men), but that rumor could not be confirmed or denied.

It has been difficult for me not to recall that particular memory when I think about this beautiful woman, also known as the State of Israel.On some level, I feel like Israel is sort of like a very high-priced escort. A beautiful woman in a bikini, pouring drinks -- or freaking out and throwing shot glasses at the wall, depending on which personality is on display on a given night.(I get it. I know some people are very attracted to the combination of pretty and pretty messed up. It's exciting, right?)

And worse, I feel like my inability to fall in love with her -- much less meet her -- is shutting me out from some very particular part of belonging in this otherwise really beautiful, amazing community. Like I'm not fully authentic because I just don't know her.But this woman, gorgeous as she might be, is SO messed up that I'm not sure I CAN ever fall in love with her, even if we ever meet someday (which, on my budget seems unlikely anyway).

Worst of all, I am expected to have strong opinions about a woman I've never met, and do not know how to love.Sorry, folks, but I just can't be that disingenuous. I've never met her. I can't love -- or even form an opinion -- about someone I've never met. It's an impossibility. And it's maddening when things are so crazy and so many of my friends are waiting for me to get on the bus already and wave my flag and march in the streets and whatever else passes for a membership card in this weird scene. I don't know how to pretend. And I don't know what to make of it all. I wish I did, because identifying with -- no, actually falling in love with this beautiful woman -- seems to matter a whole lot to questions of identity and belonging. While I want to belong and feel like in some ways I already do, this issue hangs over me like a sword some days, and it just gets to be too much to live with the stress and worry from within as well as without.

First-ever home-grown video: I shot the video while riding my bicycle today (one hand on the handlebars and one on the rather old digital camera), uploaded it and added in music using iMovie. It took me over an hour to figure out how to compile a 38-second video. Assuming I keep at it, I'm hopeful it will eventually take less time. A brief snapshot of my neighborhood on a sunny fall day. Enjoy, and have a lovely week!